'It's hard to concentrate on a movie when the boy who possesses your heart is sitting mere inches away. I feel hyperaware of all my senses, like I never really knew my own body until this very moment. I wish he would hold my hand. I wish I could hold his hand. But I'm afraid.' Annemarie 'Shug' Wilcox has been best friends with Mark for as long as she can remember. Now, for no particular reason, she's fallen in love with him - and every moment they spend together (but not 'together') is torture. Shug knows that there's nothing special about her. She's freckled and gawky, with a ridiculously flat chest. Is it any wonder that Mark spends all his time gawping over her curvacious older sister? Or that she's the butt of constant ridicule at school? And it's not even as if Shug can turn to her parents for help - her mother's always tipsy and her father's never home. Shug's fiery temper and honest voice make for a charged, moving story about growing up, fast.

 

There are 256 pages in this book. This book was published 2006 by Simon & Schuster .

The collection is edited by Stephanie Perkins, author of Anna and the French Kiss and Lola and the Boy Next Door .